Lexis Flashcards
Idiolect
Our distinctive and individual style of speaking influenced by personal and social identities
Fillers
Words like um and er which is used in spontaneous speech when thinking or in nervous situations
Taboo
AKA expletives, topics which aren’t discusses.
Swear words
Regional Variation
the umbrella term which incorporates accent and dialect
Dialect
the words and vocab we use
Colloquialisms
Informal words or phrases
Neologisms
Creating new words in the language
Sociolect
How social groups influence our idiolect
Jargon
specific terms that only a social group would understand
Etymology
origin/journey of words
Denoting
definition
Semantic/Lexical fields
recurring lexis from the same field
Blending or Portmanteau
A type of neologism where you blend words together e.g Brexit (britain and exit)
Acronym
Abbreviation of several words that form a word itself e.g NASA
Initialisms
First letters of each word in a series but the letters don’t form a new word e.g BBC
Hedging or Vague Language
Phrases or words that don’t directly say what they’re talking about e.g kind of, maybe
Clipping
Shortening words
Operant Conditioning
Children learn via positive and negative reinforcement
Child Directed Speech
Children learn via caregivers using language targeted towards children e.g shared knowledge, prosody, simplified lexis
Vulgarism
Words just short of taboo (on the formality spectrum) e.g bloody, crap
Lexical Ambiguity
Where a word has multiple meanings which can lead to confusion in a sentence e.g flexible, cool
Semantics
Correlates with meaning e.g implying no by saying ‘later’ or ‘maybe’
anadiplosis
a type of repetition where the last word or phrase of one clause or sentence is repeated at the beginning of the next
opinionated language
a personal viewpoint presented as a fact
statistical language
factual data used in a persuasive way
e.g 80% of people agreed ……
high frequency words
words that occur often
low frequency verbs
words which you don’t hear often
some are archaic (old) or become obsolete (no longer used)
e.g timorous for shy
euphemism
a word or phrase people use to make things sound more positive, good and likeable
e.g passed away for death
dysphemism
a word or phrase people use to make something or someone sound more negative, bad and unlikeable
e.g cement shoes for death
french lexis
elegant sounding terms
latinate lexis
complicated, long words
anglo-saxon lexis
basic, often monosyllabic
diachronic linguistics (diachronically)
change over time
synchronic linguistics (synchronically)
change happening in a moment of time
pejoration
when a word’s meaning becomes more negative over time
e.g attitude used to mean position
amelioration
when a word’s meaning becomes positive over time
e.g dizzy used to mean foolishness
specialisation/narrowing
when a word’s meaning narrows over time
e.g girl used to apply to males and females but now only young women
generalisation / broadening
when a word’s meaning widens over time
e.g pretty used to denote attractiveness but now it is commonly used as a modifier like pretty cool
polysemy
a synonym for lexical ambiguity
malapropisms / untypical collocations
where texts use incorrect collocations / idioms e.g powerful coffee
collocations
two or three word phrases herd frequently together
genderlect
describes the way conversation between men and women is not right and wrong, or superior and inferior just different
coined by deborah tannen
speaker oriented epistemic modal tags
request info or confirmation of info
e.g but you took the train today didnt you
speaker oriented challenging tags
confrontational and may boost the force of an utterance
addressee oriented affective softner
mitigate impolite demands
e.g pass me my book, would you please?
addressee oriented affective facilitative tag
invite conversation turn on speakers assertion
e.g the election will be interesting wont it
affective tags
indicate concern for the addressee
